It has been a while since my last baked scones, vividly remembered it was my first baking class which conducted in Miri last year. How time flies, almost a year!!! I love scones as the buttery smell came from a little bit cookies crunch outside with a bit of fluffiness inside. Perfect with a cup of hot tea or coffee over high tea. It's just fabulous.

After making few rounds of scones, I discovered the secret to scone success, is all in the flour. Forget about regular all-purpose flour. It does not suit this purpose at all, at all. I learned that cake flour has a much softer husk, than
all-purpose flour or plain flour. Upon this discovery I started making scones once again, made some minor changes to my previous recipe, and created this create scones. Of course butter also playing the great agent, the better quality it is, the better scone it is.

Take a closer look, see the fluffiness of these buttery raisin scones

These buttery raisin scones are not made with baking soda and buttermilk. The raising agent used is baking powder with regular milk.

I'm posting a guest post from an author from UK about this fantastic Alternative Chocolate Cookie Recipe.**********************************************************************************************************************************Some people struggle to make cookies, either because they struggle to follow the recipe, the method seems too difficult, or simply because the mixture looks too good and they don't make it into the oven.

For those who want a simpler recipe to follow on their days off, the recipe below might be of help. It will be perfect for anyone who is a chocoholic, and wants to bake a snack to accompany them as they browse CheekyBingo and enjoy their day off work.

Yahoo...Hankerie is now an Australian certified coffee roaster. Coffee always my passion comes after my bakes. Of course, a good quality cup of coffee is essential to match any of my cakes. Else, the taste definitely cannot be heavenly taste combined.

All my key interest on coffee beans actually started from my certified Australian Barista day. Being a barista, everything related to coffee become so important. A good cup of coffee not only comes from grounded coffee, it's actually starts from how to roast the coffee bean accurately from raw coffee, different types of coffee beans to match with different type of the coffee that you are going to make, ground the freshly baked coffee bean, make the espresso until making the perfect froth milk. These vital steps determine the freshness of the coffee to serve.

Take a closer look, this is my first time to see the raw coffee Arabica bean. The skin contains a bit blueish.

Last Friday was my long day, I travelled from Brisbane CBD to Gold Coast. Mark is my trainer of the day and I need to work with this gigantic roaster of the day. No clue about all these machine until using them. Human since ages ago already invented these fantastic machine to roast coffee! With the growth of technology, even so the technique and design still origin and having minor adaption from the 1st coffee machine that human has invented previously. Impressive! I was stunned and surprised as I able to control all these by myself and managed to produces 8kg of roasted coffee beans. :)

My first batch of 100% roasted coffee, all by myself!!

Using the freshest batch of roasted coffee bean, brew a cup of cuppucino. In fact, it taste differently.

This was my 2nd Australia charity event to help the homeless people whereby it was a bit different in the way that help CEO to raise fund in conjunction of CEO sleepout event. You might be wondering what's this CEO sleepout event?

In fact, these Brisbane bosses voluntarily swapped their warm beds beds and houses for a freezing cold night in the open to raise money and create awareness about homelessness. All money raised through the sponsorship of participants goes directly towards the ongoing provision of Vinnies’ homeless services across the country. If you're interested to donate some via online, you may support them at "Rise to the Challenge"

Sounds so unique and it only happens in Australia especially after the flood tragedy happened last time. A lot of victim suddenly become homeless people just in 1 night. Hence, a lot of charity events happening to help out all these homeless people.

With that, Kate from Arrow Energy organized an bake off morning tea event to support our CEO for this fund raising. Anybody can bake and bring to office, for those who do not bake, just bring money to donate and enjoy the bakes. Even from this small event, we managed to raise AUD382.80 for those homeless people. Well done, everybody.

After this event, I indeed caught into surprise that I was proudly mentioned in the email chain to all staffs.

4 different types of macaron that I specially baked for this events were:

Hankerie's macaron

Melody macaron

Most famous burger macaron - CEO loves it so much.

Chocolaty lemon macaron - do not deceived by its look, it consists of lemon cream even it looks like pure chocolate cream

Banana bread is not quite bread and not quite a cake, but is still delicious! Especially it serves together with a cup of hot brewed cuppucino. What a perfect match for breakfast!

In fact, for me - Banana bread is maths. Well, trying to make healthy banana bread with no butter , that also isn’t rubbery, is maths. The high butter quantity in banana bread has always annoyed me as it feels like it should be a healthy snack. Banana + Bread = healthy, right? Hence, I utilised the logic of chiffon cake, substitute the butter contains to canola oil. At first, thinking to use olive oil but in the same time worry olive oil smell will override banana fragrance. Enjoy this light, fluffy and healthy banana bread!

Cut into slices, the typical cake look.

The banana bread batter - smell nice with all the mash banana all over.

Welcome to Hankerie!

Adding Life to Food.

All of our bakes are home-baked by using only the freshest ingredients. We have own creations and and decorate them by handmade with love and care. Feel free to contact us at hanker@hankerie.com for a detailed quote. Location only available at Sydney now.